35 Reasons to Work From Home: Remote Work Benefits in 2024

Despite the increasing debates surrounding workplace models post-pandemic, the benefits of working from home are indisputable.

In fact,  89% of employees say they want to enjoy the benefits of working from home some or all of the time. That's why it's so important for employers, business owners, and People Operations professionals to understand the benefits of working from home before they craft new workplace policies.

While some advantages may appear trivial, they can transform countless people's lives. Working from home can mean the difference between being able to see your daughter's first steps, launching a successful side business, and staying fit — or not.

So, do you want to enjoy flexible working schedules, or are you an employer looking to attract and retain top talent?

It all starts with the benefits of working from home. Keep reading to discover some explanations behind the numerous advantages of remote working.

35 Benefits of Remote Work

1. Less Commuting

If you work from home, you can save time on your commute.

This one's obvious, but you might have 20, 50, or 120 minutes more to enjoy your day. That means more time to sleep, less stress in the mornings, and more leisure time in the afternoon. All this time is yours — so make the most out of it.

2. Work from anywhere in and around your house

Bored with your desk? The benefit of working from home is that…you can just ditch it.

Relax on the sofa. Start using your back porch. Turn your kitchen counter into a standing desk. Head to the park, the library, the coffee shop, the museum, the coworking space…

Working from home actually means you can get stuff done anywhere in and around your house — all you need is a comfortable seat and some wifi. Make use of that flexibility to find what place works best for you!

3. Spend quality time with family

The impact of working from home on childhood education, parenting, quality of life, and happiness levels is indescribable.

We might all need a break from family at times… But if you’re a parent, every minute at the office is a minute spent not seeing your child grow, laugh, cry, dance, and wonder.

‘Nough said.

4. Witness improved employee productivity

Research indicates working from home boosts employee productivity.

The data’s mixed about this one, starting with how you even measure productivity. However, numerous studies show remote work has not affected employee productivity — if anything, it’s improved, according to reports by Great Place to Work and Bloomberg. And it’s important to know why, so you can take full advantage of work from home!

That’s partly because the elimination of long commutes and workplace distractions improves your energy levels and focus on the job. It’s partly because of the adoption of new technology to communicate and collaborate, as well as the reduction in pointless meetings and “face-time”. And it might also be that the flexibility of remote work gifts workers the chance to optimize their workflow in ways that suit them best!

5. Expect new digital skills training

The benefits of working from home include skills training.

Working remotely this year, you might’ve noticed… How frequently you used new software tools, how you learned to write more concise emails, or how impressive your time management skills became! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Working from home, you can expect to learn new skills — both hard and soft — all the time.

6. Enjoy internal networking and friendly catch-ups

Those days when you’d squeeze a sprint to the coffee shop before your day at the office? That time you had to call your mom in the bathroom because she had big news to tell you? Or that place you worked at for months without finding the time and place to meet up with your cubicle neighbor? Gone.

Flexible work from home means you're free to plan your days as you see fit, with time for friends and coworkers. Work from home has also normalized video calls, which makes catching up and networking easier (and less time-consuming!) than ever.

7. Eat healthy, inexpensive home-cooked meals

Do you remember…eating a cold bagel? Having your lunch spill in the car? Forgetting your afternoon snack? Grabbing (too much) coffee with (too much) sugar on the way?

Too many office workers eat out too often. With remote work, you can eat affordable, delicious, home-cooked food every day. This can mean the world to people with a tighter budget, dietary restrictions, ambitious fitness goals…and it sure does mean a lot for the average foodie! This is certainly the most delicious benefit of working from home.

8. Contribute to a lower environmental impact

Research shows that working from home reduces greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, and office waste. In other words, by cutting out your commute and reducing the need for utilities at the office, you’re reducing your environmental impact on the planet.

The benefits of working from home for the planet shouldn’t be underestimated. For instance, just part-time remote work in the U.S. could reduce carbon emissions by more than 51 million metric tons annually!

9. Revel in personalized office space

Remote work means your office is truly yours, to make of it as you please.

What’s more you than having picture collages all over the walls? Do sober colors and fur carpets scream you? What about a stuffed unicorn or two? Personalizing your office space means more than just furniture, though! You can also listen to your favorite music, use a scent diffuser, and play with the lighting to suit your needs.

Working from home, you can decorate your workspace however you'd like, in ways that boost your own productivity and joy on the job.

10. Access a wider talent pool

The benefits of working from home are clear when it comes to a supply-side labor market. As a leader, remote work lets you employ all over the city, country, and world. You can access a much wider talent pool, and you’re sure to find the perfect hire!

Hundreds of companies already specialize in helping you find the perfect new employee, from Angel List and Distant Job to hyper-specialized organizations like upstack.co and arc.dev.

And as a remote employee, you can enter exceptional workplaces — without moving an inch from your sofa. No need to worry about uprooting your family to the city or losing your friend group to the suburb!

11. Invest in better mental health

Remote work, done well, can be truly empowering.

According to a study by Flexjobs and Mental Health America, 80% of remote workers in the US believe greater work flexibility helps them take better care of their mental health. That’s because it allows you to shift your schedule according to your own needs, reducing the stress and anxiety of getting everything done within narrow time frames.

“Allowing employees to work flexibly can significantly reduce the conflict that we all experience between our personal and professional lives, and better equip everyone, regardless of their career level, to take better care of their mental, emotional, and physical needs,” says Sara Sutton, CEO and Founder of FlexJobs.

12. Obtain flexibility for caretakers

Working from home often means spending more time with the people you cherish. But it’s not just about family or children. Working from home also benefits another group of individuals we tend to leave behind: caretakers.

Indeed. For caretakers, working from home can make all the difference. Remote work can give you more time to help an elderly parent, a sick brother, or a friend grappling with depression. Sometimes, it’s not even time, but rather about being nearby “just in case.” Working from home alleviates caretaker anxiety and helps counter the discrimination they experience in physical workspaces.

13. Avoid office drama and office politics

Remote work is not a silver bullet. But if anything, work-from-home rewards focus — away from office drama and office politics.

Some of us rightfully fear the return to office gossip, power plays, and empty flattery. While remote work can’t save your team from office politics, it gives you the time and space you need to opt-out.

Working from home allows you to connect with individuals you have a lot in common with, to hold the type of conversations you’re truly interested in. It also makes you an active participant in creating the company culture. In truth, because remote settings don’t offer up serendipity, both leaders and employees work together with intention to create the culture they desire working from home. And that’s one of the greatest benefits of working from home!

14. Work from home with pets

Whether you’ve just adopted a turtle or you’ve had a feline friend for years, working from home lets you enjoy your pets’ company, stress-free. It’s no small thing that this year, countless workers suddenly had the time to train, groom, and walk a pet!

For many of us, sharing the day with a fluffy, adorable creature can boost our happiness, productivity, and energy at work — all the better for the company’s bottom line!

15. Make time for hobbies and passion projects

You know you’re enjoying life when you have the time, space, and energy to fall in love with something new. And that’s what countless remote workers get to do daily!

From baking to rug-making to skating and reading, you can finally own your leisure time. Working from home eliminates a hundred hassles of everyday life, from ironing clothes in the morning to packing lunches and commuting to work.

This leaves time for you to explore newfound interests, longtime hobbies, side hustles, and passion projects. It’s a benefit of working from home that too many people forget!

16. Enjoy greater creativity at work

Fully remote companies are ready to roll.

Remote leaders tend to work iteratively, with an eye for constant improvements to the workflow, communication styles, and collaboration patterns among their team. The online environment that working from home offers means business managers must intentionally optimize their work processes. And that means they’re always on the lookout for cutting-edge ideas on a whole other level than brick-and-mortar companies.

Meanwhile, flexible work from home allows you to dive into deep work a lot more often, free from distractions and meetings. This has boosted a huge number of employees’ creative juices over the past couple of years, a trend we hope continues to grow.

17. Find success for small business

If you're a startup or small company, you know remote work can make all the difference. With reduced costs, increased productivity, greater flexibility, and a larger talent pool to pick from, work-from-home can give smaller organizations an edge.

This is particularly true for small companies headquartered in villages, unknown suburbs, and rural towns. However, even an up-and-coming startup in Toronto can benefit from remote work, particularly when there’s limited talent nearby in fields like software engineering. Our team knows full well just how advantageous it can be to hire from everywhere!

18. Benefit from increased employee retention

Employers have discovered that giving potential new hires the chance to work from home gives them a competitive edge.

With the Great Resignation of 2021, it’s become crucial to invest in employee retention. A supply-side labour market means top talent is itching to find a great job with great benefits and amazing culture.

Working from home not only improves employee retention but also boosts employee loyalty — the feeling of belonging and protectiveness people develop when they care about something important to them.

And given how expensive, time-consuming, and downright exhausting it is to replace people on the team, both employers and employees stand to gain from increased retention rates.

19. Find time for health and fitness

Working from home gives you the time and flexibility to improve your health by cooking something tasty every day or hitting the gym in the morning.

Excessive sitting increases blood pressure and cholesterol levels, and it also leads to weight gain. Unfortunately, this is true everywhere.

But working from home gives you the flexibility you need to invest in your health, with daytime exercise, standing desks, walking calls, and more. The business world stands to gain from a working model that drives down the costs of health insurance, absenteeism, and poor employee engagement. And the possibilities are endless for employers and employees alike to improve their quality of life!

20. Savor travel, from weekend trips to digital nomadism

Here’s one of the benefits of working from home that sounds painfully obvious: you can go somewhere new anytime you want.

The truth is that not that many people want to be digital nomads. However, nearly everybody loves the idea of working from a lakeside cottage for a weekend or moving somewhere sunny or cute or fun for a month.

Whether you’re heading two towns over, escaping to a friend’s boat, or flying off to an exotic location, working from home empowers you to explore the world.

21. Profit from lower absenteeism

Work from home boosts both productivity and engagement, which combine to lower absenteeism by 41%. Essentially, knowing that you can get your work done empowers to work!

An employee working from their favorite spot, in their favorite clothes, surrounded by all their favorite things is also a lot more likely to show up to work even when they’re feeling less motivated.

If an employee has the sniffles — that annoying but not-so-serious cold everyone catches in November — they can also work from home rather than miss a day at the office to stop the spread.

22. Save money by cutting unnecessary expenditures

Working from home allows you to cut costs in a thousand different ways, whether you’re an employee or a business leader.

As a worker, you can say goodbye to commuting costs, overpriced coffee, and uncomfortable clothes. And if you’re an employer, you can say goodbye to real estate rip-offs, utilities and other overhead costs, and fancy furniture.

With work from anywhere, you can say hello to… well, whatever you want instead! Those extra savings can be used to improve your quality of life, invest in your retirement fund, or buy you the experiences you truly desire and deserve.

23. Benefit from asynchronous communication perks

Yet another benefit of working from home? You can easily take full advantage of asynchronous communication. Sharing information through messages, emails, jam boards, and more rather than in real-time allows remote employees to gain even more flexibility in terms of when and where they work.

Working from home asynchronously gives you even more flexibility to shift your schedule around according to you needs since you don’t need to attend a flurry of meetings. And it especially gives you the free space you need for deep focus — that elusive mindset so many designers, engineers, strategists, and creators require to thrive.

As a business, asynchronous communication inherently allows you to request — and obtain — the outcomes you need within reasonable timeframes, rather than vague assurances and face-time. Async workflows also allow you to seamlessly spread across borders and timezones whenever necessary, to accommodate global partners, hire freelance developers on the fly, or expand where the markets take you.

24. Make remote work perfect for introverts

Working from home allows different personality types to thrive — including introverts!

Introverts expend less energy when they limit their face-to-face interactions with people. That means introverts feel more energized alone and can work harder for longer in quiet environments. They also enjoy setting their own goals and schedules — free from micromanagement.

For these reasons, many introverts have thrived during the pandemic in ways even they didn't expect. They were more productive, more talkative (asynchronously), and their ability to quietly deliver results was recognized and appreciated.

Working from home widens the pool of talent that gets to stand out. It helps introverts enter the spotlight, too!

25. Increased automation at work

The diversity of programs, tools, and strategies you can use in working from home is astonishing. Because so much of our job happens in documents or calls, increasing automation in work from home is easier than ever.

You can cut busy work and save time by integrating every application you use into the same dashboard, taking notes on Almanac, or tracking your time with Toggl.

For every work process you have, take the time to map it out in a flow chart and ask yourself where you can save time. You might find a few surprises!

26. See improved documentation in the workplace

Working from home makes it easy for new hires and current employees to know what information they need and where to find it.

Documentation is essential when working asynchronously, but it’s also an important benefit of working from home because it makes your job — and life — a whole lot easier. That’s why some companies like GitLab made documentation a key part of their onboarding and culture guidebooks.

You can automate note-taking in important calls with Gong, or access notes, brainstorms, and to-do lists in apps like Notion, Almanac, and Mural. Even quick messages can be found again by hitting the search bar in Slack or Teams!

By investing in your documentation process, you can easily make work-from-home work for you.

27. Complete fewer pointless tasks

Remote companies typically value output over time and performance over culture fit. That’s because they are, by default, more interested in results than in face-time. In other words, an important benefit of working from home is that you won’t be cast aside for watching different TV shows — or even for working fewer hours, depending on your productivity.

Sadly, that is often the exact opposite of office-centered organizations, where cracking jokes and being the last to leave are too often prioritized. This encourages workers to invest in meaningless tasks and spend more time looking good rather than being good. When remote managers prioritize outcomes and communication over face time, there's less BS and fewer pointless meetings.

28. Enjoy improved focus working from home

Working from home, you can find the work environment and schedule that suit you best, free from distractions and unwanted conversations.

Remote workers do not enjoy improved focus by default. However, it is much easier for you to increase and improve your hours of deep work if you’re working from home.

Take advantage of this benefit of working from home today by growing awareness of and advocating for your needs. For instance, you can establish expectations for your team about when you will answer messages, what counts as urgent, or what meetings should actually be recurring. Perhaps most importantly, you can set boundaries.

Working from home, you can even disable all notifications every morning or create no-meeting Fridays to facilitate deep work. It’s a matter of finding out what works for you — and having the flexibility to make it happen.

29. Observe increased collaboration at work

It might come as a surprise that working from home can actually increase and improve collaboration at work. But that is actually yet another one of the benefits of working from home!

This certainly has not been the case in every remote company this past year. However, permanently remote organizations operate under the notion that leadership and collaboration require intentional efforts.

As a result, your team manager is paying more conscious attention to collaboration. They might choose different tools to improve teamwork synchronously in meetings and asynchronously offline. As Slido reports in their State of Online Meetings brief, the vast majority of office workers believe virtual chats can be more engaging than in-person encounters.

Working from home, you will also obtain more diverse input from people who might otherwise have trouble being heard.

30. Discover better sleep and rest patterns

Working from home, just a few feet away from a bed, can be both troubling and liberating.

While it took some time to get used to it this past year, most remote workers have discovered that they can optimize their work schedules to meet their bodies' needs. Whether you're a siesta, night owl, or early bird, work from home can accommodate your sleep patterns.

Working from home also eliminates your daily commute, which can give you up to three hours more Zzzzzzs!

31. Use new communication tools and VR technology

If you’re working from home, you might just be at the forefront of technology. From (super) high-quality video calls to awesome messaging platforms to VR and AR, one of the benefits of working from home is that you can take advantage of new tools to improve your productivity, engagement,

Cutting-edge platforms were created to meet specific needs in the modern world — like the loneliness of not seeing people’s faces during the workday, or the incapability of staying fit while living a sedentary life, for example. Try Loom to send quick, cute, and easy videos to peers, or use Meet with Spot to hold important meetings while walking!

Remote workers are building the future to bring their onboarding, training, and collaboration to the next level.

32. Find urban life in the suburbs with the Donut Effect

A surprising benefit of working from home, in the long run, will be the complete revamping of the suburb. You won’t need to miss the hustle and bustle of downtown because a sprinkle of it will come to your house.

In what’s been called the donut effect, workers attracted by cheap suburb housing and the wonders of urban life can now have…both. Work-from-home has accelerated the move from the city to the suburbs, leading to a decline in commuting — even for leisure — and a higher quality of life for remote workers.

33. Expect greater diversity in the workplace

Remote work can remove some barriers for neurodivergent peers, minorities, and people with disabilities.

It can mean not struggling to maneuver with a wheelchair or not having to cope with overwhelming sensory stressors. It can mean escaping some bias and some discriminatory practices at the office.

It can mean a lot to a lot of people.

34. Witness increased employee expectations

A lot has been said about the surge in available jobs, the limited supply of talent, and the increased expectations of employees post-Covid-19. But few realize that this is actually one of the benefits of working from home — both for employers and employees.

The pandemic has brought on a new awareness of mental health and work-life balance. For many, it was the catalyst for a reassessment of personal priorities and the introduction of new demands for permanent remote work, personal time off, great culture, and more.

While it will be a challenge to juggle employee and employer expectations, we can expect to see more workers who advocate for themselves and their needs, which can help them improve their productivity and engagement levels. And more than anything, it might be the golden grail of employee retention.

After all, there is nothing worse for an organization than to have star employees quietly disengage or slam the door on their way out — simply because they didn’t voice their needs or you didn’t listen.

35. Explore more diverse market insights

If you work from home, chances are your colleagues are all over the state, country, or planet. The people in your video calls might also be more diverse than ever before in terms of gender, ethnicity, nationality, religion, age, and demographic!

This is one of the numerous benefits of working from home, and for countless reasons. But here’s just one of them: market insights. You might be surprised to realize that more and more remote organizations find themselves doing internal market research. Thanks to remote work, their bustling employee body can double down as a rich, diverse, and interesting source of market insights.

Updated 12/21/2023